Tuesday, July 27, 2010

SnoutCast #26: "Why YOU Should Run a Game"

Yes, you. I'm talking to you. You should run a puzzle hunt event. And here's why! (Apologies for the extra-long podcast this week, but we had a lot to say on this topic; also, many thanks to Scott for letting us re-use his original content.)

00:59 - "scientific"
01:58 - as Jeff used to say: "Run more Games!"
04:07 - DeeAnn enjoys doing research
05:01 - Puzzalot blog post: "What's happening this year [2010]?"
06:35 - passing the SNAP baton (or not) to the next GC
08:22 - how Seattle differs from the SF bay area, Game community-wise
09:35 - why DASH may become an annual event (a hypothesis)
10:44 - yes, apparently we can talk about Dr. When, The Game (target: May 2011)
12:22 - the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt (MSPH) gap
14:42 - yay for Shinteki!
15:41 - available any time: 2-Tone Game
16:14 - investigating the claim that "no more [west coast] hunts this year...would be the first time there hasn't been a BANG, a Game, and a MSPH in the same year since the BANGs inception."
19:16 - diversity is good, QED
19:57 - try something new! e.g., 2-Tone Game, Puzzled Pint
20:50 - reviving the YABA Treasure Hunt
21:55 - Puzzle Hunt Forum poll: "Why aren't you running a Game?"
23:32 - ...current results: "Not enough time" and "Don't have a consistent team" have the most votes
24:31 - "There's important context here!"
25:19 - see also: Red's GC Summit talk
25:59 - DeeAnn explains how to get around "Not enough time"
28:18 - ...and how to deal with "Don't have a consistent team"
29:30 - Team Snout believes seven is the magic number for core GC
30:22 - (Yeah, Curtis doesn't speak French very well.)
33:55 - do what you like in your Game, q.v.Jan's GC Summit talk
35:48 - PRO TIP: they'll never miss what they didn't expect
37:12 - You should run a Game because it's FUN.
38:35 - "We're pathological?"
39:19 - all hobbies involve work, but they're still fun
41:19 - many thanks to Scott for Puzzalot and the Puzzle Hunt Forum!
43:15 - The End

4 comments:

What I was (kinda badly) trying to say about the possibility of there being the first time there hasn't been a BANG, Game, or MSPH in a year wasn't so much that there haven't been year gaps before, but instead that in 2010 the gaps could all happen at the same time. Kind of like how there have been strikes in the NHL, NBA, and NFL before, but if they were all to happen in the same year, it would be something (sadly) unique.

I realized afterwards that my statement kind of cheats in that there hasn't been a year where there hasn't been a BANG before anyway.

Yeah, I think we might have to add "You guys stole my exploding plane puzzle idea" to the list of reasons to not run a game. :)

To answer your question about the MS Puzzlehunt, there aren't any Seattle events announced other than Puzzle Safari this weekend. There are rumors of various things going around, and another Puzzlehunt is one of the more solid rumors, but things are probably far from being set in stone.

There is a lot of stuff run within Microsoft on a pretty regular basis, but the only Game-like MS event is the Intern Game. So the only way to participate in that sort of event internally is to playtest the Intern Game, and the demand for non-Microsoft Game-like events in Seattle is still huge. The recent SNAPs and DASHes that have done first-come-first-serve registration have sold out in minutes to hours.

Really interesting podcast that touches on an important issue in the community. One issue which you briefly touched on that I think is an important one was the non-altruistic motivation for running games. It'd be great to think that everyone runs games just because they want to give back to the community. And I do think that's a large part of it because given the amount of work it takes, you need to have some love-driven motivation.

But as you mentioned, there has definitely been the trend that if you've run a game in the last couple years, it's known that you're much more likely to get into another game as sort of a "thank you." However, how does this mesh with the whole "inconsistent" GC issue? I ask because let's say, hypothetically, that two small teams wanted to join forces to create a GC for a game. In the next game, who gets "credit" for it?

I would propose that both do. But what if you have members of 3 or 4 teams? Even if there's only one or 2 people per team, do they all get "credit"? That said, I fully support joined GCs since I couldn't agree more on a minimum of 7. Paparazzi was done with a GC of 4-5. We had fun, but at the end, it gets painful. I can only imagine how fun it would be to have a huge GC of 7 :)